Moorgate…the unresolved tragedy

"As darkness came, there was a very loud noise, metal and glass breaking, no screams, all in the fraction of the second one takes to breathe in. It was all over in no time.”

Javier Gonzalez was speaking to the BBC, after surviving the crash that claimed more lives on the Tube than any other single incident. He spent weeks recovering from his injuries in hospital.

On February 28 1975, the 0838 Northern Line Underground train left half a minute late from Drayton Park, carrying 300 passengers to Moorgate on the Highbury branch.

As the train approached its destination at 0846, it failed to slow. Travelling at 30mph-40mph, the six-vehicle train entered the overrun tunnel at Moorgate terminus.

Fifty-six-year-old Driver Leslie Newson, carrying nearly £300 in cash ready to buy a car for his daughter, remained upright and took no action. He did not move or raise his hands to protect his face as the train crashed into the end wall of the tunnel, crushing the first, second and front-half of the third vehicle into approximately half of their original length.

Staff at Moorgate immediately called the emergency services, and the first ambulances were on the scene just eight minutes after the impact.

The station had been left in complete darkness, engulfed by dust and soot. Newson was killed, along with 42 passengers. A further 74 passengers were injured and needed treatment in hospital.

Forty years on, the site of the incident bears no mark of it. But the causes of the crash are no clearer now than they were then.

That Friday morning, on the last day of February, Motorman Newson had a normal start to his working day. He didn’t usually eat breakfast, but always made a cup of tea before work, and today was no different.

When he arrived at work at about 0610, he was in plenty of time to join his colleagues for another cup of tea before starting duty at 0624. He shared some milk from his flask with one colleague, and another asked Newson for some sugar, to which Newson told him: “Go easy with it, I shall want another cup when I come off duty.”

The other drivers didn’t know Newson well, but they generally regarded him as “conscientious” and “cheerful”. He’d been employed at London Transport since 1969 and, although he had recently transferred to Drayton Park, he was familiar with the Highbury branch. In the 13 days leading up to that Friday, he had driven 121 times onto Platform 9 (where the accident occurred) without incident.

All the usual checks were carried out - the brakes were effective, and everything was in order.

Guard Bob Harris was assigned to Newson’s train that morning (Train 272), but he was running late. So Motorman Rozario volunteered to fill in until Harris arrived. Rozario did not know Newson, but found him to be fit and normal that morning, and the train ran as expected.

Harris took over just after 0700. He was 18 and had only been in the job since the previous August, but he’d worked regularly alongside Newson since his transfer to Drayton Park that January.

The pair chatted briefly between the following three journeys. They never spoke a great deal, which Harris said he thought was because of the large age gap between them.

That morning, Harris told Newson he was going camping that night. Newson said he was mad: “I would not go camping in this weather. I loved it at Dunkirk, but I would sooner go into a hotel.”

As the train left on its fourth (and what would be its final) journey, Newson waved to a colleague on the platform at Drayton Park.

Just after the train departed Old Street, Harris left his post at the leading end of the last vehicle and entered the driving cab in search of a newspaper.

Engrossed in the advertisements, he paused at the leading double door bay on his way back, and suddenly realised that the train was approaching Moorgate too fast. No sooner had he thought it, than he was thrown to the floor.

Standing on Platform 9, Railman Andrews watched the train approaching and knew it couldn’t stop in time. He immediately decided to ring for Control from the adjacent platform, but he was already too late.

Nearby, Guard Friar stood among the 20 to 30 people waiting on the platform. As he heard the train approaching too fast, he looked round to see Newson sitting in a normal position in the cab, looking straight ahead of him. The train knocked down the red marker light, and sand blew into the air as the train hit the sand pit and ran into the overrun tunnel.

Several eyewitnesses who were interviewed later corroborated what Friar saw - that Newson did not move.

A recovery operation ensued, that was described at the inquest as being of “unprecedented difficulty”. The only journalist allowed into the tunnel (Gerard Kemp from the Daily Telegraph), described the scene as “a horrible mess of limbs and mangled iron”.

It took hundreds of police, ambulance staff, members of the Salvation Army and more than 1,300 firemen four days to retrieve everyone onboard.

Twelve hours after the collision, a young policewoman was rescued from the front carriage after her foot was amputated.

It was not until 13 hours and 19 minutes after the collision that the last survivor was rescued. And the driver’s body was finally recovered on March 4 - four days later.

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DJMAC
- 16/01/2016 14:46

Yes I can vagally remember this & still get flashbacks about it, The most annoying thing about this is that it's 41 years ago & what actually has been done about it, Not a great deal by the looks of thing's, Another job been swept under the carpet. The General Public have a right to know, They've asked Questions, It's Time that they got answers, & now, Not in 2051 when the case will cease.I personally would like to thank R.Jones & B.Goodfellow for their great efforts to what they've done Well Done Lads.

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What DJMac is referring to when he says "Not in 2051 when the case will cease" is the Coroner's Inquest Witness Statements-a 76 year ruling on these documents was placed in 1975 after the Inquest into the collision at Moorgate.
However,the Inquest Transcripts which are over 500 pages long are available to view at the London Metropolitan Archives the address is;
40 NORTHAMPTON RD,CLERKENWELL,LONDON EC1M 6BY
Nearest BR/Tube Station-Farringdon -note;on the Tube it is on the Circle,Hammersmith & City and Metropolitan lines.
I agree with DJMac that we should get answers -there needs to be a new senior judge led public inquiry into this disaster-this was no accident -this was a disaster waiting to happen, LT had been running the network on a reactive basis since WW2 and had persistently decided against installing trip mechanisms on the whole network-they were only installed after the Moorgate collision,had they been installed a few years before then the lives of the 43 people lost on the 28th February 1975 would have been saved.
There had been another 7 serious collisions before Moorgate which did involve loss of life and injuries but serious nonetheless-the majority of those collisions 1938 Tube Stock units,the one involved in the collision at Moorgate had been sent to Drayton Park from Neasden with brake and motor defects and a defective dead mans handle and was due to be taken back to Neasden to be scrapped -instead it was scrapped in service at Moorgate.
In other words,the cause of the collision was mechanical failure on a train that should not have been on a railway track in the first place -LT & HMRI covered up the cause to blame a wholly innocent train driver-we need a new judge led public inquiry where ALL the evidence should be made available-inc. the Coroners Inquest Witness Statements -that 76 year ruling should be overturned and the evidence presented to a new judge led public inquiry.
I remember the Moorgate collision well, watching it on BBC & ITN news coverage of it in the part of the West Country I am from, I was on half term holidays from school at the time and was 8 years old thinking "what the hell happened here"-I never did believe the driver was to blame and that mechanical failure on the train was the cause of the collision- I hope there is a new public inquiry as the victims families never got justice.

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A theory never explored was that Newson had forgotten the direction in which he was travelling (from the driver's point of view the three intermediate stations would look much the same northbound or southbound). If Newson was wrongly expecting the next station to be Drayton Park which was on the surface, it's non-appearance might have utterly confused him and caused him to respond in disbelief by accelerating the train in a futile attempt to make the expected daylight of Drayton Park to appear.

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Thirty-five years after Britain's worst Tube crash one victim's son asks: Did a suicidal driver kill 42 innocent passengers?
By LAURENCE MARKS
UPDATED: 20:18 +11:00, 5 January 2010
24
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On the morning of Friday, February 28, 1975, I was sent to cover a terrible train crash at Moorgate Underground station.
A Sunday Times reporter, it was only later in the day that I discovered that my 68-year-old father might be a passenger.
That evening I made a call, repeated every hour, to the emergency switchboard set up by the police for relatives of those trapped in the crash.
Devastation: Emergency workers attend the aftermath of the crash in 1975
Devastation: Emergency workers attend the aftermath of the crash in 1975
Every call ended with the same monotone: 'No, sorry. No Bernard Marks on our lists. No, he hasn't been admitted to any of the hospitals. If we get any news, we will call you straight away.'
I didn't sleep that night. And my dad didn't come home.
I was turning over in my mind where he might be, knowing in my heart that my dad, a creature of habit, had not lost his memory and was not wandering the streets of London having been concussed. No, I just felt he was dead.
Bernard Marks died in the Moorgate train crash of 1975. His son Laurence tells of his attempt to find out what happened on that fateful day
Loss: Bernard Marks died in the Moorgate train crash of 1975. His son Laurence tells of his attempt to find out what happened on that fateful day
At 11am the next day, the doorbell rang. A solemn-looking police constable stood there and asked if he might come in. And then he asked me to sit down.
Before he had even spoken a word, a coldness ran through me as though someone were dripping ice droplets through my blood stream. He removed a piece of paper from his pocket and began to read.
'Your father, Bernard Marks, was removed from the wreckage of the train at Moorgate station at 04.30 this morning. I am terribly sorry to tell you he is dead.'
I sat in a state of shock. As he laid his hand on my shoulder, he, too, looked grief-stricken as he told me I was the third person he had broken bad news to that morning.
Two other families had still to learn the fate of their nearest and dearest from him.
The irony that my dad had survived the whole of World War II as an East End copper, and during the Blitz had three times missed death by seconds, did not escape me.
Not now that he had been killed on what is generally accepted to be the world's safest form of transport: the London Underground.
I returned to work six days later, to be asked to spend the next year writing what would be my paper's definitive account of the Moorgate Train Disaster.
The facts were these: During the busiest hour of the busiest day of the week, the Northern Line train 272 from Drayton Park to Moorgate was running late.
On this five-stop line, the train had stopped quite properly at Highbury and Islington, Essex Road and Old Street.
Now it was making the one-minute journey from Old Street to Moorgate.
'Your father, Bernard Marks, was removed from the wreckage of the train at Moorgate station at 04.30 this morning. I am terribly sorry to tell you he is dead'
Driver Leslie Newson should have approached the crossover points, leading to Platform Nine, at around 15mph, but the train was travelling at around 35mph - and it seemed to be accelerating.
Two railwaymen waiting on Platform Nine had time to recognise Leslie Newson, sitting bolt upright in his cabin. With his cap on his head, his uniform neat as ever, and his hands on the controls, he was staring straight ahead.
'He made no attempt to move as we flung ourselves against the platform wall, instinctively throwing up our arms to protect our heads,' one of the men said later.
From my interviews with passengers who survived the disaster, they, too, were greatly alarmed, with many bracing themselves for the impact they knew was only seconds away.
Train 272 rushed past the signal at the end of the platform, hit the 15-yard sand drag and shattered the hydraulic buffer. It then smashed into the 5ft thick concrete wall at the end of the tunnel.
The driver had not even raised his hands to shield his face.
Injured passengers are pictured waiting in an ambulance before being taken to hospital after the crash
Trauma: Injured passengers wait in an ambulance before being taken to hospital after the crash
On impact, the first coach doubled into a 'V' as the driver's cabin rose and buried itself in the concrete roof of the 16ft-high tunnel.
The second coach - where my father was - drove itself under the end of the first, crushing it further before being crumpled itself, down into a space of barely 3ft at the front. And then the third coach hit its back and rose up over it to hit the first.
The front three coaches - 156ft of metal - were compressed in a 60ft dead- end tunnel. The three back coaches were relatively undamaged.
Forty-one people were dead. Eighty-two were injured, some very seriously. Two were to die later.
I needed to know how my father had died - and whether he had suffered
As a journalist, my brief was to discover why the accident had happened and whether it could have been avoided.
But on a personal level, I needed to know how my father had died - and whether he had suffered. I was asking these questions both on my own behalf - and on behalf of every relative who was bereaved.
Four weeks after the accident, having digested all the available news, my first step was to discover who had been involved.
This I did from City of London Coroner Dr David Paul, who 'encouraged' me to steal the transcript of the inquest from his safe.
I'd never considered myself a safe-breaker, but I did take the 900-page document, rushed back to my office to have it photocopied - and had it back in the coroner's safe before he returned from his lunch appointment.
As well as being the verbatim transcript, the document contained the names and addresses of all those killed, along with pathologists' reports as to the causes of death.
Naturally, I turned first to the report on my father. The cause of death was cited as 'cerebral contusion', which meant my dad had died quickly from a single blow to the brain - and had not lingered in pain.
I felt greatly reassured. After all, I'd seen the condition of the train, so this was a source of enormous relief.
Pictured: The aftermath of the Moorgate train crash
Pictured: The aftermath of the Moorgate train crash in 1975
Then Keith Simpson, Professor Emeritus of Forensic Medicine, who had conducted the post mortem examination on the driver, agreed to see me.
He explained both what he had looked for and what he had found. First, he'd wanted to rule out the possibility of electrical injury, which would have proved an instant explanation for what had happened.
But there had been no mark or electrical burn on the body that might have prevented the driver, Leslie Newson, from controlling the speed of the train.
Nor had Prof Simpson found any sign, such as a bitten tongue, to suggest Newson had suffered an epileptic fit, nor anything to indicate a heart attack.
The lack of obvious medical causes for the crash fascinated doctors, and a race soon emerged between neurologists and psychiatrists as to who could publish their respective theories the fastest.
Within a month I'd established, thanks to London Transport engineers, that there had been no mechanical failure of the train, nor any signal failure.
I couldn't help myself: the deeper I delved, the more curious I became - especially when no answers were forthcoming.
And so I returned to Dr Paul, the Coroner.
At the inquest, and in summing up for the jury, he indicated possible verdicts of manslaughter, misadventure, accidental death, suicide - or an open verdict if the jury felt there was not enough evidence for a definitive conclusion.
When I questioned Dr Paul on the issue of suicide, he said: 'A suicide verdict would imply Newson had deliberately set out to kill all the passengers on the train.'
'Would he have done?' 'You tell me,' said Dr Paul.
What on earth was the driver doing? What was he thinking?
Then after a long pause: 'But Laurence, that is the path you should follow. It is my personal belief that the driver committed suicide.'
He then turned to a page in his inquest papers and pointed out to me the evidence of the train's guard, Bob Harris, who had been at the back of the train.
Dr Paul had asked Harris whether he remembered any other occasion when a train driven by Mr Newson had overshot the platform. Harris replied that he did.
When Dr Paul asked when that was, Harris replied: 'It was either the Monday or Tuesday before the crash.'
My heart beat fast. This seemed extraordinary. What on earth was the driver doing? What was he thinking?
That particular overshoot in an open tunnel was the distance of an entire carriage. Dr Paul emphasised the significance of that overshoot - given how meticulous and pedantic Newson was.
He was a man who had gone by the rulebook (indeed, an open rulebook was found in the driver's cab), which made it quite clear to me that this had been no accident.
Emergency services help the injured outside Moorgate station after the crash
Injured: Emergency services attend to the wounded outside Moorgate tube station following the crash
I was eager to clear up the bizarre story that was circulating in the Press that Newson may have been drunk and found out where the story came from.
When Dr Anne Robinson, a leading toxicologist, had given evidence at the inquest, her conclusions caused quite a sensation since they appeared to indicate Newson was drunk while driving his train.
But Dr Robinson was quick to dispel this assumption.
'I didn't say that,' she protested. 'What I said was that his alcohol content was twice that of the other eight samples I took at the same time - bodies that had been under the same conditions. I have taken into account the post-mortem alcohol changes - and still his contents are almost double.'
'And that means what?' I asked. 'Well,' said Dr Robinson, 'in my opinion he had taken a drink of alcohol the morning of the crash.'
'But why would he have done that? He was a non-drinker?'
'So I have heard, but I think whatever he did have to drink - and it must have been something without odour, like Bacardi or vodka, for the pathologist could not smell anything on Mr Newson's breath - it was for Dutch courage.
Perhaps he knew what he was going to do - and wanted to steady his nerve.'
As I returned to the office that afternoon, suicide was seeming increasingly likely - it was all stacking up . . .
'In my opinion the driver, Leslie Newson, had taken a drink of alcohol the morning of the crash'
But it's something that can't be proven - unless the suicide cares to leave us a note. So all I could do was present my evidence - and let the world make up its own mind.
Nine months on, I had spoken to everyone involved in the story and was convinced I was dealing with perhaps the most bizarre disaster on record.
I'd even talked to the world's leading suicidologist, Dr Bruce Danto, who agreed with my theories.
The one person I hadn't spoken to, though, was Helen Newson, the driver's widow, who knew more about Leslie Newson than anyone. It was imperative I spoke to her.
Her legal advisers knew I was interviewing everyone connected with the crash and strongly recommended she didn't talk to me for fear of compromising a compensation claim that she was planning.
And so I wrote her a letter explaining who I was, what I was doing - and how my father was killed in the second carriage.
I drove to her South-East London council flat and knocked on the door. No reply. I dropped my letter through the door and turned, preparing to drive off.
Then I noticed a Ford Escort pull up. Mrs Newson and her two daughters got out. I walked over and told her who I was.
She said she didn't want to talk about it - and started walking towards her flat. As she did, I noticed that tears were running down her face.
Rescue teams are pictured at the scene of the crash
Tragedy: Rescue teams are pictured searching through the wreckage at the scene of the crash
I went back to my car - but something told me to wait. Half an hour later, Leslie Newson's daughter came down and said: 'Laurence Marks, we'd heard what you are doing - but we didn't know your father was killed on the train.'
She got into the car and explained that her mother simply could not face the ordeal of going over the final days of her husband's life.
I explained how much this investigation meant to me - and that without her mother's contribution it would be only half completed.
And then she began sobbing. 'My dad would never have killed himself. He was a happy man.'
'Please,' I begged. I was taken upstairs. At last, I stood face-to-face with Mrs Newson - and I'd never been so scared.
I'd met all the top professionals in this story without any qualms - and yet here I was, shaking in front of this poor woman, feeling exactly the same as I did the moment I discovered my father was dead.
Mrs Newson was calm and sympathetic - in marked contrast to me, the journalist, who was trembling and near to tears.
Gently, we went through the events of the crash. She told me she had been to the building society the day before the crash, at her husband's request, to withdraw £300 with which he would buy their younger daughter a car.
I asked her why he had taken the money to work with him on the day of the crash. She did not know. But she did admit he had been a lonely man. A man without friends.
The hardest question I had to ask was about her husband's drinking habits. She stated quite categorically that the only time he took a drink (brown ale) was on high days and holidays.
Mrs Newson was calm and sympathetic - in marked contrast to me, the journalist, who was trembling and near to tears
I asked whether she kept vodka or Bacardi in the drinks cabinet that was in the corner of the room. She opened it for me - and there stood a bottle of Bacardi.
I asked whether it was possible that her husband had taken a drink on the Friday morning of the crash, and she admitted that the level in the Bacardi bottle could have gone down.
She then asked me her one and only question - the one I'd feared she would ask.
'Why do you think it happened?' she asked, searchingly.
I had to tell her the truth. 'But my Les would never have committed suicide!'
'You knew him better than I,' I conceded. 'I can only work from ten months of evidence. And that evidence points quite categorically to driver error.'
We said goodbye. And I never saw her again.
In the 35 years since the crash, whenever a television or radio programme deals with the subject, I am asked why Leslie Newson never stopped his train? I answer: 'He could have.'
When I had eliminated myriad medical reasons why he might not have been able to, and had taken into account the microscopically detailed engineering reports, as well as every witness's statement, there was no other conclusion - except for the fact that Leslie Newson didn't want to stop the train.
I don't know why. No one ever will.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240625/Thirty-years-Britains-worst-Tube-crash-victims-son-asks-Did-suicidal-driver-kill-42-innocent-passengers.html#ixzz4FakAR7OC
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This was a reply to that Mail Online article:
If Mr.Marks cares to contact me I can appraise him of the correct facts, I was the Fire Brigade officer in charge of rescue. I also reached Mr Newson first . he had not been drinking, I can confirm that he had the throttle closed and in his right hand as if holding the dead man's handle in the brake down position. I had already been trained in LT train use. as a Emergency tender OIC. Mr Newson did not commit suicide and this is also the opinion of other experts in LT and the Police whom I liaised with in later years. the family of Mr. Newson can rest assured the above is correct which may be of some comfort to them . I have tried to contact the family of Mr.Newson on previous occasions to no success. My contacts in LT who personally knew Mr Newson have also confirmed the above he was well acquainted with the Station and no effort on his part could slow the train as he followed the correct procedure. I was there for the period from one hour after the collision until the fourth day as Officer in Charge of Blue Watch rescue
– Eddie Carrera, Norwich, 05/1/2010

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Ahd here is a letter published in the Islington Tribune 2nd March 2012:
The real crash train
Published: 02 March 2012
• THE letter about the 1975 Moorgate Tube train crash was most interesting (Moorgate disaster driver a target of vicious campaign, February 24).
A contemporary of motorman Newson at the time of the accident, I was a trainman on the Bakerloo line, and the Northern line shared our rolling stock.
Over the last few years, I have used my working knowledge and experience to scrutinise available evidence concerning the crash, mainly from the transcripts of the inquest and the government railway accident report into the cause of the Moorgate crash.
That report should have come with the caveat E&OE, errors and omissions excepted.
Evidence suggests to me that the crash train was not the one claimed to have been prepared for service and driven by Newson on several trips without complaint, and that the first driving trip south in it was undertaken by another motorman who found the brakes and other equipment to be in good order.
It appears the crash train was acquired by Newson in an unofficial crew changeover at Old Street station.
Newson drove it to Drayton Park for the first time that morning, and then south to Moorgate whereupon it crashed.
It appears the actual crash train had been sent to Drayton Park depot, from Neasden depot, with brake and motor defects.
It was awaiting return to Neasden, where it was due to be scrapped. Instead, it was scrapped in service at Moorgate.
Anthony Bright
Penarth,Wales.